Will Gordon shed a tear for his old grammar school?

When Gordon Brown entered Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister he talked about the excellence of the education he received at Kirkcaldy High School in Fife. He even invoked the school motto – "I will try my utmost" – and claimed: "I wouldn't be standing here without the opportunities I got there."

Some in Scotland detected a massive hypocrisy in these words. His grammar school might have given him - and many like him - the opportunity to get on in life but that had not stopped Brown being in the vanguard of Scottish socialists who wanted to abolish every grammar school in the country. They succeeded: state education today in Scotland is a comprehensive monopoly.

That would seem to have taken its toll on educational excellence, say critics, even in Brown's old elite grammar. According to today's Scotland on Sunday, Brown's alma mater (now a comprehensive) is no longer giving its pupils the sort of opportunities he enjoyed.

"Earlier this month," reports the paper "the school, which was previously regarded as a beacon of academic excellence, was branded one of the most underachieving in Scotland, prompting education officials to draft in a troubleshooter.

"Despite the 1,300-pupil school being ordered to address declining standards in 2006, a new follow-up report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) criticised the school for poor exam results, low staff morale and disruptive behaviour among pupils. Overall truancy levels were twice the Fife average and four times the Scottish average."

It certainly wasn't like that in Brown's day, when the school was one of many Scottish grammar schools which gave pupils from ordinary backgrounds an education rigorous enough to allow them to compete as equals with those who went to expensive private schools, which Brown duly did when he went to Edinburgh University and more than held his own against privately-educated students.

His old school doesn't seem to provide that sort of opportunity any more. Scotland on Sunday reports that "now Kirkcaldy High is being used as the focus of a high-profile campaign to stop youngsters bringing knives to class and the school has a dedicated police officer. Lunches sold in the canteen are now branded with the slogan: 'Knives Cut Lives'.

"In a move that would have been unthinkable during Brown's schooldays, pupils are being issued with the mobile number of the school policeman so he can be summoned quickly in the event of trouble."

There is much talk these days about the decline of social mobility. Brown's old school might provide a case study on why it is so. There is also lots of comment about the return of the public school boy to positions of prominence in society, with David Cameron and Boris Johnson being the two most obvious examples, when for two generations after the second world war grammar school pupils swept all before them.

Those who regret the demise of the grammars pose this question: if you destroy the centres of educational excellence for bright kids from ordinary backgrounds, but keep those which are reserved largely for children who have well-off parents, why would you be surprised if public school kids started grabbing all the glittering prizes once more? The Prime Minister, who took a special satisfaction in the destruction of the grammars when he was younger, might like to ponder the answer to that question as he dips his toast into his boiled egg this morning. He might even shed a tear for what has happened to an institution to which, in his own words, he owes so much.

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A by-election poll boost for the Tories

Oh dear. Rather than buy votes, Gordon Brown's £2.7bn unfunded tax cut has doubled the Tory lead in Crewe & Nantwich according to an ICM poll of the constituency for the News of the World tomorrow. Tories on 45% against Labour's 37%, suggesting a Tory majority of about 1,000 - and a 12% swing. The under-35s have turned against Brown the harshest, with 56% of them saying they will vote Tory. Some 24% say the tax bribe has made them more likely to vote against Labour and just 4% say they are more likely to vote Labour as a result. As a general rule, 4% is about the share of a Western country believing that Elvis is still alive. Brown has taxed us so much that a £250 rebate (at most) would never be that welcomed. As I say in my News of the World column tomorrow, if a thief steals your wallet and returns your library card you don't thank him. I expected the result of the tax bribe to be neutral. But to harden hostility to this extent - well, it really takes something. Brown's only consolation is that this £2.7bn was money borrowed from the City. The way things are going, it will be a Cameron government that picks up the bill.

NOTE: ICM sample random 1,000 people on 15 and 16 May.

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The legality of war

The Cherie Blair interview in The Guardian is well worth reading and I’m sure it will be all over the news that the Blairs have not been invited to Downing Street by the Browns. But to my mind the most interesting part was when Martin Kettle pressed Cherie on the legality of the Iraq war:

"Of course, as a lawyer, I thought about it ... And like everything else, as we know from the attorney general down, there are different views about this matter. The one thing I would say, as a lawyer, is that we all know that if there had been a right answer to it in international law terms, don't you think that would have been clear? It wasn't clear. It still isn't clear.

I was not advising the army and nor was I advising my husband on the law. I really am not going to get involved in a discussion about the legal position of the Iraq war. I am not the person to do that because I am not sufficiently impartial as a lawyer about this, because it's a matter that is of interest to the person that I am closest to in the world."

Cherie might not be impartial but her fundamental point is right: in contentious cases, international law is not that much use as the interpretation of it varies so greatly. Indeed, most people use international law as a proxy for morality—which it isn’t.

Revealingly, the emphasis on legality is selective. Few talk about the legality of the intervention in Kosovo, which in strict international law terms had less justification than the war in Iraq, because most people still think that Kosovo was ‘the right thing’ to do. Personally, I still think that the Iraq war was justified but one has to concede that there are many strong arguments against it. The argument about its supposed illegality, though, is one of the weakest.

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The Gord delusion

Matthew Parris, who has been consistently right about Gordon Brown, is on brilliant form in The Times this morning. Matthew points out how Brown seems quite incapable of admitting error. 

Considering that Brown created the 10p tax band, abolished it and then reinstated it he must have got something wrong at some point. Here Parris analyses Brown’s answer to this question:

"To my incredulity, he told his interviewers that the £2.7 billion tax cut, financed by borrowing, was a response to the world economic downturn: a measure to stimulate domestic growth by putting extra money in people’s pockets. Brown said he wanted to ease the financial squeeze being faced by hard-working families. Asked why the need for this had only been discovered since the Budget, he could give no answer. It was pitiable.

It was also scary. I’ll tell you what scares me, and scares (I believe) a wider public who may not always be consciously aware why. It’s not the thought that the Prime Minister may be lying. It’s a more disturbing thought: that he may not. That under the terrible internal pressure created in his own head by a refusal to accept either that his will may be thwarted or his judgment questioned, the PM is having to warp the external world to make it fit.”

Take the early election, if Brown had called in Andrew Marr that Saturday and said yes we did get rather carried away with how well everything was going, we did get distracted by the thought of an early election and the speculation did get rather out of the hand in the hot-house atmosphere of the party conference but I’ve told my colleagues to go back to their departments and concentrate on governing and can assure the British people that this won’t happen again then I think the whole fiasco would have caused him much less damage. Instead, he suggested that he was constitutionally obliged to think about having an early election as the Tories were calling for one and denied that the polls had had anything to do with his decision. Both assertions were risible and helped create the current credibility gap.

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More anger over the 10p tax con

Simon Heffer's at his angry best in today's Telegraph, attacking Brown over the recent 10p tax con.  Here are the last two paragraphs, but do read the whole thing:

"The £2.7 billion loan, at a time when we are grotesquely over-borrowed, is the final sign not merely that this man has no idea about sound economics, but that he is unfit to see the country through hard times. Total public spending is around £617 billion a year. It would not even have constituted what accountants call a rounding error to make a saving of £2.7 billion in a total of that magnitude, yet Mr Brown could not bring himself to sack a few thousand from his overmanned client state, or trim spending elsewhere, like the private sector is being forced to do thanks to his mistakes. He is the corporatist equivalent of a shopaholic, the Viv Nicholson of Downing Street; when all else fails, go on a splurge.

The problem is, though, that the splurge has been with our money, and has left an ugly legacy. Mr Brown is as fit to preside over economic recovery as Harold Shipman would be to chair a conference on medical ethics. We must hope the electors of Crewe and Nantwich make this point forcefully next Thursday, and throw the bribe back in his face. The game's up, Gordon."

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The week that was

Fraser Nelson outlines the high cost of living, and claims that James Purnell could be the next Labour leader.

James Forsyth asks CoffeeHousers to suggest what the Tories would achieve if in power, and wonders whether Ken Livingstone's heading for Parliament.

And Peter Hoskin says the bleak economic horizon spells trouble for Brown, and hopes that voters are seeing through Alistair Darling's 10p tax measures.

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Brown's sermon on The Mound

Do you give in yet? Because Gordon Brown still isn't through. Another speech tomorrow, to the General Assembly on the Church of Scotland at The Mound in Edinburgh. Pointedly, it's the 20th anniversary of Thatcher's speech there - allowing Brown to contrast his mission with her wickedness. We can expect a pious regurgitation of his goals. Shame the means he chooses are inimical to those goals. Most of all, we can expect a dusting down of Brown's Son of a Preacher Man credentials. Brown has only two oratorical styles: the pulpit sermon, inspired by his clergyman father, and the statistical, rapid-fire, speak-your-weight machine.

I, for one, will listen. Brown is sincere in his beliefs, as most lefties are. One cannot accuse him of seeking power for its own sake, he just suffers from the classic leftist conceit. He believes that the more power is placed in the hands of a virtuous elite, the better society will be. The legacy of Brown's failures can be seen by the inner city slums, sink schools and family breakdown all across Britain. His way doesn't work, and everyone now knows it. That's why tomorrow's speech should be a requiem for his ambitions for Britain - mourning the gap between what he wanted, versus what we all got.

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The 42 day detention rebels make their move

Things are hotting up over the Government's plan to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days.  A group of Labour rebels, headed by Andrew Dismore MP, have tabled an amendment which calls for detention to be kept at 28 days, but a range of new bail measures introduced.  The Lib Dems have immediately stepped out to say that - if their own amendment isn't selected by the Speaker - they'll support Dismore's proposals en masse.  

All of which adds to the feeling that Brown is facing defeat over this - yet another thing that would pile pressure on his premiership.  Watch this space.

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More bad news for Brown

One of the last things Brown will want is a summer of public sector unrest.  Problem is, that's exactly what he might be facing.  Check out Michael Millar's post over at Trading Floor for the lowdown.

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Brown's poverty fiddle

Over at the Adam Smith Institute blog, Dr Eamon Butler highlights a very important truth - that severe poverty has worsened under this government.  How so, when the Government claims to have lifted 'a million' people out of poverty?  Well - as you'd expect - it's all to do with a Bronwie-style, statistical fiddle.  

The Treasury defines a poor household as one which earns under 60 percent of median income.  They've expended a whole lot of effort, time and taxpayers' cash to lift people from just under that line to just over it - success, by this Government's terms.  But those far below the line have been left behind.  As Dr Butler points out, those with incomes below 40 percent of the median have swelled in number, so that things are the worst they've been for 30 years.  

So much for Brown's self-stated goal of improving opportunities for all, then.

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